Gabriel Fauré Quotes

To know an art really well, one must know everything about it, both its origins and its development.

Laloy, Louis (December 1906). "Gabriel Fauré". The Music Lover's Calendar. Volume II.

And I always enjoy seeing sunlight play on the rocks, the water, the trees and plains. What variety of effects, what brilliance and what softness... I wish my music could show as much diversity.

As for my work, I can say that it reaches its end. [...] I do not want my Quartet to be published and played before it has been tried out in front of my friends, who have always been the first to hear my works: Dukas, Poujaud, Lalo, de Lallemand. I trust their judgment and it is to them that I leave the decision of whether this Quartet should be published or destroyed.

How many times have I asked myself what use music is? And what am I translating? What feelings? What ideas? How can I express something I do not understand myself?

Mason, Daniel Gregory (1915). "Fauré and the Beginning of the New". The Art of Music: The Voice and Vocal Music. New York: The National Society of Music. pp. 347-353

When I am no more, you will hear said of my work: "After all, it is only so much..." You will detach yourself from it, perhaps ... All that has no importance. I have done what I could ... and so, judge, my God.

For me art and music especially consists of raising ourselves as high as possible above that which is.

Now, there are some periods of music, some pitches of which I can hear nothing... of my music as well as of others. I feel that there is on my shoulders nothing more than a terrible cloak of misery and discouragement.

Gabriel Fauré, repeating a thought he had often expressed to me, wrote in a letter on the 2nd August 1910: "In piano music one cannot use padding; one must pay in cash so that it is interesting all the time. It is perhaps the most difficult genre if you want to be as satisfying as possible," and he added modestly, "and I do my best." Then, as if in reply to some unjust reproach, "Only it cannot be done any faster."

It was not just in the Andante of the Second Quartet that I remembered having translated (almost involuntarily) the distant memory of bells which in the evening at Montgauzy — and this is some time ago — came to us from a village called Cadillac when the wind blew from the west. From this dull sound a vague dreaminess arose, which, like all vague dreams, is literally untranslatable. Only, does it not happen often that some exterior fact numbs us so that our thoughts become so imprecise that in reality they are not thoughts, and yet are nevertheless something in which we can take pleasure? The desire for things which do not exist perhaps, and this is indeed where music holds sway.

He denied the presence of inspiration: "Without work, which is art, there is nothing," he said. "Say only that which is of value, or stay silent" was the credo of his entire existence.

Imagining is trying to formulate all one would wish to be better, all that surpasses reality.

"Common Chord" (August 16, 1905). "Key Notes: New Director of the Paris Conservatoire". The Sketch: A Journal of Art and Actuality. Volume 51, Number 655.

But Lortat, I'm not in the habit of attracting crowds.